Thanks Andrew. So not all original paint. Also - the engine bay looks far too good to be original - the glossy finish would surely have faded? Still a nice looking example but perhaps not 100% as advertised.

Edited January 13 by Eiremon

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Thanks Andrew. So not all original paint. Also - the engine bay looks far too good to be original - the glossy finish would surely have faded? Still a nice looking example but perhaps not 100% as advertised.

Still looks like a decent Tii.

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I PM'd the seller inquiring about the spare tire well bottom. He said that he'd cleaned off the surface and inka was underneath. Did we once determine that the floor pans / fender wells were sprayed body color when new? I don't remember.

Anyway he also said the car was sold.

Based on my correspondence with him, I believe he's telling the truth, at least as he remembers it.

And as Andrew said, still a very nice car based on info provided.

Cheers,

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If by “undercoating”, you refer to schutz or chip guard, the factory schutz was unevenly applied to the spare tire well: the sides facing outward generally had a full coat of schutz (and a full color coat), the sides facing the gas tank and the differential often had no schutz (and not much color coat, exposing primer), and the bottom had an uneven coat of schutz (and some color coat).

Below, a factory Agave car. Undersides showed a lot of primer from the factory.

And much of the color paint on the underside was simply overspray, hence the coloration of these incomplete overspray areas often differs from the appearance of the top sides.

The fuel tank was, indeed, satin black originally. It was painted black before installation in the car and was installed in the car after all the body painting was completed. There should be no body color paint or overspray on the fuel tank. On this, I suspect we agree.

The spare tire well, however, is part of the car’s unibody shell. The car’s shell, as opposed to the separate fuel tank, was primed all over, then schutzed in the appropriate schutz areas — inside fender wells, inside trunk, bottom perimeter of the external panels — and then painted body color. But the factory did not care much about getting a full coat of paint on the underside, although they were certain to get a full coat of paint at the transition from exterior panels to undersides. So the body color turns to mere overspray, and finally almost disappears on the undersides. The spare tire well was primed, partly schutzed, and, at least the edges visible while standing next to the car were painted, but that paint fades to schutz and primer as you move toward the center of the car. There was no black paint on the spare tire well. The primers were gray and gray-ish-green. Accumulated dirt and grime, strictly post-factory, are black. Cars undercoated post-factory received, generally, black undercoating. And replacement body panels are generally primed — at the factory — in black.

I’d say, based on what I see, that the Inka car has been at least partially re-painted, and there’s additional Inka on both the exterior panels and on the transition from exterior panels to undersides. But it’s certainly not terrible. It’s probably a second coat of overspray on top of the original overspray....😯

The first photo below is an original-paint underside of an Agave car, illustrating how ridges of the undersides caught a full blast of body color, while much received nothing but a dusting of overspray. My factory-Inka ‘73, which has had the underside partially steam cleaned, removing the grease and grime build-up in some areas, is mostly primer in the driveline tunnel, with light Inka overspray (second and third photos). The light Inka overspray, dusted over the gray primer, yields a tonality closer to Colorado (orange), but this is simply the thinness of the overspray. Notwithstanding my ‘73’s current Malaga exterior (don’t worry, it’s just a 1980’s phase it’s going through), I also see remnants of what I believe were Inka touch-ups, which — as I recount above — deposited more overspray on my ‘73’s original overspray, yielding virtually solid color near some transitions from external panels to underside (fourth photo)!

I think the subject car above, similarly, had a second round of Inka applied post-factory, at least in areas.